I raised my eyes toward her. What enabled her to live in such a world of fantasy? I wondered. Her faith? Or was it just her ignorance of how hard it could be?
“All I ask of you is that you try, Phoebe, you really try. You going to do that for yourself? Well?”
I looked down again.
“I hope so, Phoebe. I really pray for it. You should go back to school tomorrow. It’s not healthy for you to hang around here doing nothing but stare at four walls.”
“What about my father’s home?” I asked.
“All that’s being handled by Uncle Buster. He’s trying to get all he can to keep in trust for you so you’ll have something out of all this misery, but I got to tell you, right now it doesn’t look like there’s much. That old furniture in that rented apartment isn’t worth trucking out, and from what we can see so far, your daddy didn’t keep up his payments on his term life insurance. I’m sure he needed every cent he could earn just to keep up ordinary expenses. And your mother, your mother is in the hands of welfare.”
So I have nothing but Aunt Mae Louise’s and Uncle Buster’s charity, I thought, nothing but the few rags that hang in this closet.
“I’m sorry, child,” she said. “But this is why you have to try harder to be good.”
With that she left me.
Try harder to be good? She might as well have said try harder to fly like a bird.
What did being good mean? Doing everything they wanted me to do and never doing anything I wanted to do. That was the way I saw it. That was the way I always saw it.
And that was the way I always will, I thought.
Maybe I would go on the roof, wave my arms hard, and jump.
5
An Invitation to a Party
During the funeral and after, I saw that my cousins Barbara Ann and Jake looked at me with fear and expectation in their eyes. I felt they were waiting for me to go crazy, scream, and be wild, or maybe just explode as if a bomb of misery and sorrow had finally been ignited inside me. I understood they were expecting me to be as destroyed and distraught as they would be should something as horrible happen to Uncle Buster. I was at least smart enough to realize that for children their age, parents were their whole world, even if it had never been true for me. Parents brought sunshine and happiness, laid out their daily lives, and moved them about with godlike power. Nothing made you see that you could get sick or have an accident, whatever, and die too as much as the death of your daddy or mama. You look down into your own inevitable grave when you look down into theirs, and that puts the ice into your veins.
I suppose my lack of a real relationship with my daddy and with Mama helped me face a world without them. Maybe that was a good thing after all. I wasn’t thinking all that much about them after I had been brought here, except in anger. In other words, we didn’t miss each other the way parents and children should miss each other. They were almost completely gone when we lived together. This numb feeling that kept me from crying at the cemetery wasn’t something I could explain or wanted to explain to Barbara Ann and Jake. They would eventually understand it themselves by just watching me go on, plodding through my day instead of crawling under my bed.
Barbara Ann didn’t talk to me at all in the morning. Jake avoided my eyes. When it came time to go on the school bus, Barbara Ann hurried away to sit with her friends. Since my trouble at school and the death of my daddy and his funeral, it was easier for her to pretend she didn’t know me. I didn’t blame her for that. Actually, I thought, if I was her I would probably have acted the same.
Ashley was sitting with another boy when I got on behind Barbara Ann. He looked at me quickly, and then he and the other boy whispered something and laughed. I was disappointed, but not all that surprised. By now I was sure he’d had enough time to characterize me any way he wanted to and make himself look like some sort of victim. His parents were surely happier about that, and, from the way his friends gathered around him on the bus and in the halls, I could see he was something of a hero.
That’s funny when you think about it, or just plain unfair. When a boy gets into trouble with a girl, his friends pat him on the back and he struts through the school corridors like some heroic war veteran. When a girl gets into trouble because of being with a boy, she’s supposed to keep her eyes down in disgrace and be ashamed. Well, I wasn’t going to keep my eyes down. I’d eyeball anyone who dared to look at me with disgust, not that I looked forward to it.
In fact, I didn’t think I would be happy about being stuck in one classroom all day, but for now I was grateful. I didn’t have to face the students here as much and see those crooked smiles on their faces and watch them whispering about me. The others in my class seemed unaware that anything had happened at all. Mr. Cody certainly treated me the same as he had when I first entered his classroom. He didn’t mention anything except to tell me how sorry he was to have heard about my father’s tragic death.
“You’re lucky to have an aunt and uncle like the Howards,” he added to make me feel better, I’m sure.
I didn’t say thank you or anything. Suddenly silence had become a good and close friend. The quick comeback, smart remarks, sticking it to people I didn’t like, none of that mattered. I was still moving in a very narrow, dark hallway of my own, and I had no interest in stepping back into the light of day. I buried myself in the work Mr. Cody gave me. I ate my lunch alone. I continued my work, and then I sat in the rear of the bus going home, my eyes looking blankly on the world outside, my ears shut to the gossip and laughter around me. I knew in my heart that, like a time bomb, sooner or later I would explode.
At least for a while at home, Aunt Mae Louise eased up on what she had described as my chores. She didn’t call me out to set the table for dinner or help with any of the food preparations. I wanted to believe it was out of some kindness, some compassion, but it occurred to me that she wasn’t all that eager to have more to do with me than necessary. At least for now, it was more comfortable for her to keep some distance and not have me at her side in the kitchen.
Death had brushed its hand over my face and left its dark shadow under my eyes. My mama was spinning about in her own lunacy, and I was an immigrant from that mad world. Like some unwanted foreigner who had to be tolerated, I was pushed off, driven by indifference into my own place. My room had become another ghetto. In fact, Aunt Mae Louise didn’t even look in to check on how I was keeping it anymore.
I also noticed that at the dinner table, the conversation rarely, if ever, involved or included me. As if I was no longer there, they talked only about themselves. Aunt Mae Louise asked Barbara Ann and Jake about their school work, but never asked me anything. Uncle Buster talked about his job, a trip he planned for the family soon, and they both talked about things they wanted to do for the house.
I began to consider that I might really not be there. Maybe I was the one who had died in the car accident and this was my punishment, my hell, just as I had once told little Jake. Silly and wild imaginings like that kept occurring. Sometimes, they put a wide smile on my face, so wide and bright that Aunt Mae Louise was forced to ask me what I thought was humorous.
Interrupted, I looked at her as if I had just noticed she was there. It spooked her, I know, because she looked away or at Uncle Buster for help.
“Are you all right, Phoebe?” he would ask me softly.
“All right? Sure. I’m fine,” I would tell him and return to eating.
I knew Aunt Mae Louise warned both Barbara Ann and Jake to keep their distance from me and be in my company only when it was absolutely necessary. Neither ever came to my room anymore, and when they passed me in the hallway going or coming from the bathroom, they kept their eyes down and their lips pulled tightly shut. Barbara Ann’s puckered mouth was drawn up like a drawstring purse. She continued to ignore me completely on the school bus and walking to and from it. The two of them were keeping themselves in an invisible plastic bubble when it came to having anything to do with me. I didn’t real
ly care. It was just something curious because I wasn’t quite sure if they had the bubble around them or I had it around me.
I continued to behave the same way in school, only vaguely aware of how many of the students were laughing at me until one afternoon, while I was eating my lunch at an outside table, two girls approached me.
They were both white, the taller one prettier, with hair like spun gold and turquoise eyes as bright as polished stones. She had a runway model’s figure and a very confident air about her, telegraphed in her correct posture and the arrogant turn in her shoulders when she walked or spoke.
The other girl wasn’t as pretty as she was voluptuous, with a fuller figure, dark brown hair, and hazel eyes. Her features weren’t as dainty as the taller girl’s, but her lips were thicker, sexier, like someone who had gotten those cosmetic shots to make them so. I had the feeling she was a work in progress and would probably have her nose redone.
“Hi,” the taller girl said. “I’m Taylor Madison and this is Rae Landau. We heard about what happened with Ashley Porter,” she added, and sat.
“Yeah,” Rae said, sitting beside her.
I looked at the two of them and smirked. Pride tightened my throat and lifted my shoulders back.
“Big deal. I guess you’d have to be deaf not to have heard,” I said.
“Exactly,” Taylor said.
“So what do you want? More details to spread?”
“No. We want to tell you we feel sorry for you,” Rae said. “Ashley has been telling all sorts of stories about you, exaggerating and embellishing to make himself look better for sure.”
“I don’t care what he says,” I replied. Then I paused to scan their faces, searching for their real intentions, since they said they weren’t here to get more details. “Why would you two care so much, anyway?”
“He did something like this to me,” Rae revealed. “And it was just as unpleasant for me afterward. I almost had a nervous breakdown.”
I know I looked skeptical. I could see Ashley picking on a new girl, especially one like me who had no friends here, but not a girl who looked like she could buy and sell whatever she wanted, especially friends.
“A nervous breakdown?”
“She’s telling the truth,” Taylor said. “He tried to get me to go on a date with him after he dumped on Rae, but I wouldn’t give him the time of day so he spread rumors about me, disgusting rumors.”
“Like what? What do you think is disgusting around here?” I challenged.
“Saying I was more interested in girls and that was why Rae and I were such good friends.”
I raised my eyebrows and wondered if there was a seed of truth to any of it.
“Someone like Ashley thinks that’s the only reason a girl wouldn’t be with him,” Rae said. “He’s too egotistical to believe anything else. He can never be wrong or the cause of any trouble.”
“Yeah,” I said with a deep sigh, “I can’t deny I did agree to meet him in the nurse’s office. I can’t blame anyone else but myself for what happened.”
“You certainly can and should blame him,” Taylor cried, raising her voice. “You were here hardly forty-eight hours. He didn’t care if he got caught. He knew he would get away with it. They didn’t even suspend him, and guess what,” she continued. “He’s back on the basketball squad.”
“He is?”
“As of this afternoon. There was a hearing or something and his parents came and pleaded and the school decided he had suffered enough being suspended from the team this long.”
“I thought his daddy was a marine and was happy he was punished,” I said.
They looked at each other and shook their heads.
“Ashley lies to people so much, he probably doesn’t know himself what’s true and what isn’t anymore,” Taylor said. “His father was in the army, not the marines, and he’s an influential attorney who always finds a way to cover up his son’s mistakes, especially speeding tickets.”
“Of course, Ashley promised the school and the coach to be a good boy and never do anything like that again,” Rae added.
“Believe that, and you’ll believe in the tooth fairy,” Taylor said, and they laughed.
“It doesn’t matter to me. I couldn’t care less who is on and off the basketball team. And I don’t care if he gets away with murder around here,” I said, and finished my sandwich.
“You should care. He got you into trouble and barely blinked,” Rae said, her face scrunched in anger. “And on top of it, just as we told you, he hasn’t stopped spreading nasty stories about you.”
“Maybe they’re true,” I said.
“I hope for your sake they’re not,” Rae fired back without hesitation.
“They’re even worse than the stories he spread about me,” Taylor added.
I stopped smirking.
“What stories?”
“He said you were a professional, that you made money in the streets of Atlanta, and that your mother was one too and made you work with her,” Taylor said. “He said that’s why you were brought here, to get away from all that, and that’s why he didn’t get into as much trouble. He even said the dean took the money from you that you made Ashley give you.”
“He said I took money from him to give him sex in the nurse’s office?”
“Exactly,” Rae replied. “Today he told everyone that your father was killed by your mother’s pimp because he sent you to live with your aunt and uncle and took business from him. The kids believe him because they think his father has some in with the district attorney,” she continued.
“It’s not true, is it?” Taylor asked, her eyes somewhat narrowing with suspicion.
“No, and nobody better say it in front of me,” I told her, “or it will be the last thing they say.”
They looked at each other and then back at me.
“What?” I asked, seeing the hesitation in their faces.
“That’s not the worst of it,” Taylor said. “He’s getting some of the boys to put money in a pot so they could buy sex from you. Someone’s going to offer you money to come to a party, but there will be no doubt as to the reason why.”
I bit down hard on my lower lip, trying to keep from showing my emotions. When you had no one in the world you could trust or believe in, you felt helpless, as helpless as an astronaut accidentally cut loose in space. Instead of coming to live in a better, safer community with a superior school, I felt like I had been forced to come to a den of poisonous snakes just waiting to pounce on someone like me.
“Thanks for warning me,” I told them.
“What are you going to do about it?” Rae asked.
“About what?”
“She means, what are you going to do when the boys approach you?”
“Tell them where to get off,” I said. The two of them just stared. “What else?”
“Taylor and I have a better idea,” Rae said.
“What?”
“Agree to go to the party,” Taylor said.
“What, are you crazy, girl?”
“Just listen,” Rae said, moving closer. “We think the party’s going to be at Ashley’s house this weekend. His parents are going somewhere. Besides offering you money for sex, they’ll have drugs. We know Ashley can get Ecstasy whenever he wants to. He’s done it many times before.”
“So?”
“Tell her who your father is, Rae,” Taylor urged, and nudged her with her elbow. Rae smiled slyly.
“My father is a police detective. We’re going to tell him what the boys are up to, and he’ll be there with some other policemen and arrest them all.”
“But what good is that to me? I’ll look like I really am a whore,” I said.
“No. Rae’s father will know you are working with us and them,” Taylor explained. “The police do things like this all the time. They call it a sting operation, right, Rae?”
“Exactly. Everyone will know how you cooperated with them. You’ll look a lot smarter than those boys.” br />
“Finally, we’ll wipe that smug, arrogant smile off Ashley Porter’s face and no one will believe anything he says about any girl anymore,” Taylor said.
“You’ll be doing us all a big, big favor,” Rae continued.
“It’ll be easy,” Taylor said. “And just think how you’ll feel watching them take those boys to the police station and calling all those parents, especially Ashley’s, who will have to come home from their weekend holiday.”
“Mr. Perfect goes in the toilet,” Rae said, and Taylor nodded, both of them turning to me eagerly.
“Well, what do you think?” Taylor asked.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You can do it,” Rae urged.
“I know I can do it,” I snapped back at her. I didn’t need encouragement from this lollipop.
“So?” Taylor said. “What do you say? We’ll be with you the whole time.”
“Revenge is sweet,” Rae sang, and beamed.
“There’s no better way to put a cork in Ashley Porter’s sewer mouth,” Taylor emphasized.
“Why should I care if he talks garbage or not? It’s not going into my ears,” I muttered.
“Don’t you have any self-respect?” Rae asked, pulling back.
No, I wanted to say. I don’t even have a self anymore to respect. I don’t know who I am, much less who I will be. I was living with relatives who really didn’t want me. I had a learning disability and a court record. My father was dead and my mother in a madhouse detox unit. Nothing that happened to me or that I did seemed to matter.
“Everyone here, especially every girl, will see you as a heroine,” Taylor said. “I bet your relatives will be proud of you, too.”
“No one messes with Phoebe Elder,” Rae declared as if she was writing a headline on a television news program.
“Will you do it?” Taylor pursued eagerly.
I took a deep breath. If I really didn’t care, what difference did it make if I did it or not? I thought. I might as well do it. At least, it was something to do.